Executive Orders to Hurt ACA

Vox reported on Trump’s continued attempts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. Trump has drafted an executive order that would exempt many association health plans, groups of small businesses that pool together to buy health insurance, from core requirements like the coverage of certain essential health benefits.

An association health plan, as Vox’s Sarah Kliff has previously explained, is a way for a group of small businesses pool together to buy insurance, giving them more purchasing power and access to cheaper premiums.

It would potentially allow individuals to join these plans too, which would put individual insurance marketplaces in serious peril by drawing younger and healthier people away from them. President Trump seems ready to destabilize the market for customers who are left behind with higher premiums and fewer insurers.

Essential health benefits, mandating that insurers cover everything from hospital care to prescription drugs to maternity care, prevent plans from crafting their coverage to attract mostly young and healthy customers at the expense of older and sicker people, which had been one of the primary problems with the association health plan model before the law.